Daily News

Change and Continuity (4334)

Our editorial on what the Register's mission is, and why we're excited about its future under new ownership.

The Register’s mission is to promote the New Evangelization, by selecting news at the intersection of faith and culture, analyzing it in light of Church teaching, and presenting it to active Catholics so they can keep up on the emerging secular culture, understand and evaluate it, and so be enabled to engage it.

Our long-time readers and loyal donors will undoubtedly recognize that. We talk about it all the time. Lifted verbatim from the editorial guidelines we have distributed to all of our writers for years, that’s the special spark that inspires what we do. Father Owen Kearns and our editorial team developed it, but we can’t take credit for it.

Who’s the one who taught us to think like that? Venerable John Paul II.

Without a doubt, no one has had more influence than him on the Register’s style of reporting the news. And so we’re very pleased that, in her wisdom and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church is about to call him “Blessed.”

As our editorial guidelines tell our writers:

The Register’s approach emphasizes the Church as communion and mission. The Church is not a polarizing spectrum of opinions pitting left against right, liberals against conservatives. It is a communion of the faithful with the bishops around and under the Pope who is the visible source and foundation of the Church’s unity.

We got that from him. He drew the eyes of the Church away from the squabbles of the troubled post-conciliar years toward a larger vision.

He encouraged efforts to spread the Gospel in enterprising and innovative ways. So does our reporting:

Show how Catholics in the new millennium of Christianity are using their faith and the riches of the Church’s authentic teaching to engage the emerging secular culture.

His brand of “confident Catholicism” that came as such a breath of fresh air to the West and inspired so many in the East to shake off their totalitarian shackles was about far more than just “maintenance” of the Church: He challenged Catholics and people of good will everywhere to unite to fight against de-Christianization and for essential human values. So have we:

Show the Church fulfilling its mission to transform secular society. Emphasize its vitality.

He invented the phrase “New Evangelization”:

Chronicle the workings of grace in the new springtime of the faith and the New Evangelization.

It’s ironic that some of the late Pope’s style and decisions have been dragged into public as incompatible with sanctity, because his style was precisely this: Bearing patiently with the imperfections that invariably besmirch human affairs, he always pointed to God’s grace as the solution, and he would be the first to admit his own flaws. Nobody’s perfect, not even the saints; the point is that God does great things in and through fallible human beings. If the Church in her wisdom, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and after five long years of study, has come to a conclusion, who are any of us to question it?

Just because we are faithful and supportive of the Church does not mean we throw balance and fairness out the window: quite the contrary. We should be more balanced than the secular media, fairer and, above all, marked by charity.

We’re confident that historians will someday concur that, though his voice has been silenced, John Paul’s legacy is still enormously relevant for the mission of the Church and the papacy that he transformed. In many very significant ways, Pope Benedict has quietly continued John Paul’s style of making Vatican II’s vision for the Church in the modern world bear fruit.

Continuity in change.

It’s somehow appropriate, in God’s providence, that we too are about to experience continuity in change.

Like all of the missionary activity born during John Paul’s pontificate, the work of the Eternal Word Television Network has been shaped by and has benefited greatly from the New Evangelization he launched. The commonalities with the Register’s mission, especially since its 1995 acquisition and reorientation by the Legion of Christ, are so numerous that our readers surely won’t think we exaggerate when we see a providential Hand at work guiding this latest ownership transition. Above all we share this sincere common desire: to love the Church and to serve her faithfully and selflessly.

Readers have often commented to us that what the Register brings is hope. That’s always helped us remember that this mission goes far beyond each one of us: Hope comes from God, not from skillful journalism. He has chosen so often to bring about his good work through us and often in spite of us. That’s humbling.

And now what EWTN brings to us is … hope. The personal cost to us and our colleagues through times of financial uncertainty has been very real. At times the sacrifice has been deep. But now we’re all truly excited about the Register’s future and the improved service we’ll be able to offer our readers and the Church in America.

Under new ownership and together with our new colleagues at EWTN, the Register’s mission stays the same, her fidelity to the magisterium stays the same, the basic approach to the essentials stays the same, and the “confident Catholicism” that we’ve inherited from John Paul and Benedict stays the same.

Continuity in change because our mission is the same: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Count on us to keep chronicling the workings of grace in the new springtime of the faith and the New Evangelization — with God’s grace. Please keep us and our work in your prayers, especially if you offer them to Blessed John Paul II for his intercession.

Comments

Stillbelieve: Read Matt ARchbold blog on the National Catholic Register, “Not All Mass Murderers are created equal”. It addresses this.

Posted by stilbelieve on Monday, Jan 24, 2011 12:59 PM (EST):

The question I struggle with my Church is how half or more of her followers can give their name identification and support to the pro-abortion party, including the clergy and religious? There is something wrong with the her teaching for that schizophrenia in beliefs and actions. What am I not getting? Or what am I getting wrong? I’m grateful that there is a NCR to turn to to work out my questions and frustrations. Thank you for your mission.

Posted by Robert A. on Monday, Jan 24, 2011 1:06 AM (EST):

Claire Quintanilla asks: “What happened to John Allen, a longtime NCR. reporter?” John Allen is reporting for the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, a champion paper for the Church dissenters and liberal causes.

I will definitely subscribe to the National Catholic Register now that there will be an EWTN affiliation.

God bless Mother Angelica.

Posted by cm on Monday, Jan 24, 2011 12:32 AM (EST):

Unfortunately, many of us have lost trust in the Legion. Worthwhile efforts may have been shunned as a result. For EWTN to take over the NCR means for people like me, there won’t be that distrust anymore.

I hope and pray for the Legion to fulfill it’s mission according to God’s will, and for the trust of the Catholic world at large to one day be restored.

Posted by ELM on Monday, Jan 24, 2011 12:17 AM (EST):

To voice an opposite (maybe?) opinion of DEVONRODRIGUEZ, I hope this new relationship means that I can increasingly count on the NCR to bring me as close as possible to an Orthodox Catholic perspective of the news and events of the day—unashamedly Roman Catholic to the max.

I do not need (yet) another rag that claims to be impartial or one that claims to be Catholic yet is actually anything but.

Posted by Elizabeth Oliveira on Sunday, Jan 23, 2011 7:16 PM (EST):

It was so heartwarming to hear that EWTN has taken over publication of the Register. From the disappointing moment that the Register went from a weekly publication to a twice monthly publication I, personally, was most disappointed and actually deeply felt the loss of “my” beloved paper missing from our mailbox each Friday or Saturday morning. I sincerely hope we can return to those days of yesteryear when quality Catholic news can return to a “real” newspaper and not an on-line publication that provides little interest in our home of mostly senior readers. God Bless you again, EWTN and thanks.

Posted by Pam on Sunday, Jan 23, 2011 4:44 PM (EST):

So happy to see a faithful organization like EWTN take over the register.

Although I fully support the New Evangelization, I don’t belive this should be the Register’s Mission. The the NCR has for a very long time strived to bring OBJECTIVE news and analysis. It would be a shame if the Register went from an objective, factual newspaper to an apologetics periodical.

Posted by Lloyd on Sunday, Jan 23, 2011 1:25 PM (EST):

I was watching EWTN last night and Father “No B.S.” John Corapi said it BEST:

“Be humble, but take a FIRM witness to the Truth as accounted for by the Church and Holy Magisterium”. I love this guy. I always associate my bulldog to him.

How important it is for us Roman Catholics to seek humility yet maintain a true sense of our Catholicism in this age of immoral America. We have lost our great signal of Christianity through the perverse modern culture, and we have abandoned God for the material wealth. How hard it is to seek Christ in the poor, the destitute and the homeless! Blessed Mother Terese of Kalkotta said: “One must seek Christ in everyone, regardless of their station in Life”. I hope we can apply the same standard towards our heretic brothers and sisters, who have fallen away from the ship of Saint Peter and has joined the rest of these Protestants. EWTN will bring the true glory of God through his miracles and abundancy of graces! The network has brought me back to the faith and it is a wonderful tool in bringing back souls into the Church. No one should be damned for others just for a ticket in Hell. BUT We all have a responsiblity to save Christian souls from Satan’s demonic forces in this world today. Totus tuus, Mariae Domina!

Posted by Dick Schenk on Sunday, Jan 23, 2011 9:29 AM (EST):

Well, I for one am excited. I can set aside my worries about the demise of the Register as the Legion’s financial problems mounted. We need this paper and now we have assurance that not only will it continue but the voice will grow stronger.

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